Dustin Block

I can't go back to the page gap.

Pageless format should be the default in Google Docs.

The Wilderness Downtown Check out Arcade Fire's new interactive HTML5 music experience, “The Wilderness Downtown”.

It's been 15 years since Arcade Fire dropped their Google Maps video for The Wilderness Downtown. www.thewildernessdowntown.com

A sweet old lady wrote me to ask if I would help her out by signing off Jeopardy! every night saying "Don't forget your night medicine, my friends." I am actively considering this.

Hey, as a librarian I need to tell you:

Our funding depends on usage.

So go ahead and check out that book even if you don't think you'll finish it. No one will know. Check out that DVD even though you might not like it. Get ambitious in your quest for knowledge.

With the new GPT-5 I keep adding the phrase "think hard" to try and get it to default to the new model. If I think hard about it, I'm the one being prompted.

Confession time: I've been working on a secret side project at Vox Media for the past 18 months and it launched yesterday

Census of coffee mugs on my desk: 5.

Karate Kid: Legends is perfect.

Why people are burning Waymos + Anti-ICE Labubu, menswear guy milkshake duck, All In pod's existential crisis, a reputation marketplace, SF's salad war, a BlackBerry resurgence, NYC's dating economy and why Christians love AI slop

👁️‍🗨️ 🎥

open.substack.com/pub/taylorlo...

Elon Musk's Grok AI Won't Stop Talking About 'White Genocide' Grok has posted about South African apartheid and 'white genocide' hundreds of times in replies to users about unrelated topics

Grok: "Am I giving Elon too much credit here?"

www.usermag.co/p/elon-musks...

Update: After Reddit support sent me two emails saying they couldn't help, Reddit Security wrote and helped me reset the pw. All fixed. If this happens to you, it's possible they'll come through.

Unlikely, but who knows.

Got an email today saying I was enrolled in Reddit 2FA, even though I never signed up. It said to contact them immediately if I didn't enroll, but just got a message back saying there's nothing they can do. Sharing for anyone with a similar experience.

Before Sunrise

Check out the Rural News Network. There's hope.

Inside Reuters’ AI playbook: Why Jane Barrett says journalism can’t afford to sit this one out AI is rewriting the rules of content, but who’s writing the rules for AI in newsrooms?

“We train our journalists… to get the context right, to get the nuance right, the ‘so what?’, the ‘yes, but’, the ‘what don’t we know?’.

“Those are core tenants of journalism.

“And those are not core tenants built into any constitution of any AI model…”

mediacopilot.substack.com/p/inside-reu...

the thing I hate most about that rfk quote is that autistic lives have value and worth and beauty and dignity whether they are able to do the things other people do or not. no one is defined by ability or lack thereof and to frame divergence as lack is monster stuff, utterly godless

The White House official — who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the new program — said those who were moved into the Social Security database this week all have ties to terrorist activity or criminal records. The official did not provide evidence of the alleged crimes or terrorist ties but said some are included on the FBI’s terror watch list.

You’re not supposed to grant anonymity to liars. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

The replies.

U.S. says it is now monitoring immigrants' social media for antisemitism Effective immediately, the government says it will begin screening immigrant social media for activity that officials think indicates support for antisemitism.

Effective immediately, the government says it will begin screening immigrant social media for activity that officials think indicates support for antisemitism.

Screenshot of a post from James Surowiecki: Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us. So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is. It's also important to understand that the tariff rates that foreign countries are supposedly charging us are just made-up numbers. South Korea, with which we have a trade agreement, is not charging a 50% tariff on U.S. exports. Nor is the EU charging a 39% tariff. A graph below shows the figures cited.

Screenshot of a post from Krishnan Rohit: This might be the first large-scale application of Al technology to geopolitics.. 40, 03 high, Gemini 2.5 pro, Claude 3.7, Grok all give the same answer to the question on how to impose tariffs easily. Contained within his post are multiple screenshots of those AI results.

Well this is fun. It looks very much like Trump’s team asked AI “how to easily apply tariffs”, and based their numbers on the results - despite those results in no way corresponding to reality, economics or how tariffs work.

By fun I mean horrifying.

Will Malignant Stupidity Kill the World Economy? Trump’s tariffs are a disaster. His policy process is worse.

"But it may be even worse than that. The Trump formula is apparently what you get if you ask ChatGPT and other AI models to make tariff policy."

open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Booker's at least doing something. More than many Dems can say.

Stormwater specialists in Detroit help reduce flooding The free Detroit Stormwater Specialist Training program pays people to help reduce flooding in the city.

“It will take millions and millions of dollars to update these stormwater systems. Detroit is 80% Black, and Black people have always recognized that the government is not going to do for us faster what we can do ourselves.” -Erin Johnson, Sierra Club Michigan

outliermedia.org/detroit-stor...

Thanks! I use one that starts with tahini and lemon and then mixes in chickpeas. Works well but still trying to nail the texture. Will try the baking soda.

Recipe?